


Like Chewing on Pearls

by Aamalysstuff



Series: Soulmates through Time AU [2]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Alternate Universe - World War II, Dubious Consent, Established Relationship, F/F, Femslash, Oral Sex, POV Female Character, Porn With Plot, Threesome - F/F/M, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:47:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22423591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aamalysstuff/pseuds/Aamalysstuff
Summary: In which Francis (or Marianne) and Arthur (or Elizabeth) keep meeting each other at various points in time, in different bodies and different circumstances – but the result is always the same. It feels like they've known each other forever.1943, Paris - Elizabeth is a British spy in Nazi Occupied Paris, while Marianne is a honey trap behind enemy lines.
Relationships: England/France (Hetalia), France/Prussia (Hetalia)
Series: Soulmates through Time AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1613674
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	Like Chewing on Pearls

Everyone knew the reason why Gabrielle Chanel had closed up her shops and moved into The Ritz when the tanks rolled into Paris, but seeing her face enamored while Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage was whispering sweet nothings in her ear really drove the point home. It wasn’t as if Elizabeth Kirkland had been buying _little black dresses_ or bathing herself in Chanel no. 5 before the War started, but she might have looked at them once or twice, imagined how it would have been like, if she had been the sort of woman that presented herself like that.

Black looked ghastly on her, washed her out to the point that the only discernible thing about her face were the eyebrows. It was not a look one went for when they aimed to be appealing. It was, however, the perfect color for a servant, a perfectly innocuous and inconspicuous waitress whose sole purpose was to carry trays of champagne around the ballroom of the Ritz, serving Nazi officers while they charmed beautifully elegant Parisian women.

While it wasn’t a very ladylike thought to have, it was in moments like this that Elizabeth was ever so glad for her plain face and skinny body. She couldn’t be held accountable for the things she might do if one of those pigs looked her with the sort of presumptuous hunger she saw redirected at other women. Anger burned low in her belly – a young officer plucked two glasses off her tray without offering her a second glance. With that she knew she had to turn back to bar, pick up another set of fresh glasses and make her away across the crowded ballroom once again. 

She was light on her feet, treaded carefully, carefully as to not bump into anyone that might spare her a glance. Her role here was to be invisible – a mousy little thing that scurried in and out, the kind of person that an SS officer wouldn’t pay any attention to. Elizabeth had gotten this mission because she was unremarkable, spoke absolutely perfect French thanks to a youth spent in French boarding school and German well enough that she could pick up on conversations as she passed them. While she didn’t want to set her standard too high, she was also confident in her ability to outwit anyone.

As Elizabeth handed her empty tray over to the barkeep, she glanced over her shoulder to the mass of elegant and perfumed opulence that was surrounding her.

_Crawling with Krauts, like a den a vipers._

The barkeep handed her another tray of champagne and dismissed her without a second thought. Just as she started making her way around the ballroom again, a loud, boisterous voice, accompanied by raucous laughter broke her concentration and made her turn sharply. _Too sharply, too interested_ , a voice chided her, but luckily no one took notice.

Her feet took her closer to him before her brain could make a more rational decision. There were to many people here, so many conversations, but she was currently fixed on _SS-Obersturmbannführer_ Gilbert Beilschmidt and his circle of sharply dressed comrades. Arguably a decent focus - high-up, arrogant and prone to having a loose tongue around his drinking buddies, _SS-Obersturmbannführer_ Beilschmidt had climbed the ranks with dazzling efficiency.

He was not, however, the person Elizabeth choose to direct her green gaze to.

Hanging off his arm, dainty laugh with her red mouth curved and her blue eyes sparkling, was Marianne Bonnefoy. With her elegant poise, beautifully classical features, combined with the obscenely tight gown she was wearing, Marianne struck the kind of stature that would make Blake’s _Great Red Dragon_ fall down on his knees in front of her.

There were diamonds sparkling in her ears and rows upon rows of pearls hanging around her neck. Elizabeth wanted to tear them, rip them off her throat and see them scatter on the floor.

She made her way around them, circled the happy group and it was Beilschmidt himself that picked up the champagne flutes off her tray. She saw him offer one of them to Marianne – she took it, looked at it with a slight frown, then scoffed –

“ _Gilbert, my darling, I am sick of this champagne. It has me feeling dreadfully light-headed._ ” Her German was flawless, but she laid her accent thickly in her vowels and consonants, rolled her breath differently. The effect was seductive. Marianne handed the flute back to him, the SS Officer downed it in one go and motioned for Elizabeth to come back.

_“So what do you want to me do about that?”_ He put the empty glass back on Elizabeth’s tray absentmindedly.

Elizabeth could come up with several suggestions, though they were less what he could do to Marianne, more similar to what he could do to himself. She bit the tip of her tongue and stood there awkwardly, waiting for him to dismiss her. It wasn’t polite to hang around, but she was going to play it stupid if anyone called her out on it.

_“The lady is suggesting you could be a gentleman and help her retire,”_ one of the men in his entourage suggested. It was followed by a snicker and the low burning anger in the pit of Elizabeth’s stomach flared.

_“She can find her own way back, I know where to find her. I’m not in the mood to retire yet.”_ And with that he did turn to look at Elizabeth, and thin white eyebrows frowning at her. “ _What are you still doing here_?”

Elizabeth opened her eyes a little wider, made her best deer-in-the-headlights impersonation at him.

“ _Je suis désolée, monsieur, je ne parle pas allemande,_ ” She answered him after a moment of faked confusion. It wasn’t an appeasing answer, he doubled down at her with those blood red eyes of his and there was a shiver of dread.

_“What’s your name, woman?”_

“ _Oh, Gilbert, don’t antagonize the help_ ,” Marianne said, taking him by the arm again and pressing herself to him, likely making sure he could feel her breasts through the fabric of his uniform. “ _It’s not their fault they don’t know how to speak a language as highly cultured and complex as German_ ,” She cupped his face in her hand, turned his face towards her and told him with a smirk on her face, “ _And you know how it is with women – they can’t help but stare when they see a man as handsome as you are._ ”

That mollified him, made him grin and Elizabeth scurried away before she hear anything else. The muscles in her body were tense and her knees a little bit shaky – she kept her shoulders slightly hunched, her head down slightly. No matter how much it hurt her ego – _and it hurt, and badly_ – it was still better to be seen as an infatuated fool than an eavesdropper, a potential spy.

When she was as far away from them as it could reasonably deemed safe, Elizabeth glanced behind her. She spotted Marianne in the crowd, back retreating. Just before she left the ballroom, Marianne turned to look over her shoulder. While Elizabeth was a good distance away from her, they saw each other – she thought that maybe they made eyes contact silently across the space between them, between all the people and the noise and the war.

It lasted less than a second, and then Marianne was gone.

* * *

Elizabeth heard a noise coming from behind her. She froze, her whole body seized in the darkness of the office. Instantly she picked up the letter opener off the desk, brandishing it like a weapon. Getting caught any where was a problem – getting caught leafing through documents was going to be a certain bullet to the head, unless they wanted to torture her first and interrogate her and…

“Do you know what they do to pretty little English rabbits when they catch them snooping around?”

Elizabeth turned around abruptly, came face to face with Marianne and sighed heavily. Marianne was only a little bit taller, which meant she had taken her shoes off to sneak up on Elizabeth properly. While her voice was teasing and snotty, there was a distinct edge of tension in her low tone.

“Probably better than what they do to French women that seduce them and send information to the British.”

“Tsk. You’re right there,” Marianne came a step closer, walked around the desk through which Elizabeth had been rummaging before and stood right in front of her. The other woman smelled of perfume and cigarette smoke, Elizabeth stared at the curve of her mouth. Marianne raised her hand and tapped Elizabeth’s nose, making it scrunch up. Her face was gentle, blue eyes running over the contours of Elizabeth’s face. “You’re very reckless and you shouldn’t be here. I specifically told them to send anyone _but_ you.”

“Right. As if that was ever up for debate. They were never going to send anyone else, because I would break their knee-caps before they got here and still _come_.”

Marianne sighed, long suffering and pained. She looked on the edge of starting to shout at her, but there was no room for a raised voice here. Instead, the French woman took a deep breath, closed her eyes and counted to ten. Then, she stepped even closer to Elizabeth, took the letter opener from her hand and set it back on the table. Put her hands on Elizabeth’s shoulders and grabbed onto her. Pressed their foreheads together, gently rubbed her noses against each other.

“I don’t like the thought of you being here.”

“But I’m supposed to leave you all alone with the _Nazis_?” Elizabeth asked, incredulous. She remembered how Marianne had pressed herself up against that solider and she wanted to scream. The man most likely thought she was some sort of silly, over done floozy that wanted to suck up to the _oh-so-esteemed_ officers of the Third fucking Reich. A disposable bed warmer they could treat however they wanted.

The thought of him having touching her with his filthy hands, hands that held Lugers and shot innocent people, it made Elizabeth grit her teeth. Her hands went up to Marianne’s middle, fingers fisted in the slinky material of her dress.

“I can take care of myself, _mon lapin_. I can’t do that when I know you’re here – it’s very hard to focus on how _great SS-Obersturmbannführer_ Beilschmidt is when I know you’re here, snooping around and looking for trouble. ”

“You wouldn’t have to be here if you accepted to come with me last year. Like I _begged_ you to. We could both be in London.” That made Marianne laugh, mean and bitter.

“London’s bombed.”

“Paris is full of Nazis.”

“So there’s nowhere to run away from the war, I might as well be here. ”

“I can take of myself, Marianne. At least here I can look out for you, too.”

That made her relax a bit. Marianne fingers stopped clutching at Elizabeth’s shoulders, she put her arms around her neck and embraced her. She huffed a laugh – Elizabeth felt her warm breath wash over her mouth, felt the champagne there and imagined how her tongue might taste if they kissed. She wanted to kiss her so badly that her jaw hurt from the effort to restrain herself.

They had went to parties together, before the war. Marianne, ever the social butterfly, dressed up nicely and did her lips just like this, perfect true red and impeccably lined. Then, just like now, men flocked around her for the opportunity to mess up her carefully coiffed hair and smudge her lipstick.

Elizabeth – then, just like now – never bothered with any of the artifice. She wasn’t the sort that liked to bask in male attention, she had no interest in any of them and the flirting game was tedious for her. However, she went to all the parties, and followed Marianne with her eyes for the whole night, until one of them men got to close or touched her too much. And then Elizabeth would go to them, rudely shoulder her way between the two of _lovebirds_ and whisked Marianne away with some flimsy excuse.

They hid in dark corners, bedrooms that were seldom used, and Elizabeth kissed away the lipstick off Marianne’s mouth, smudged it all over, grabbed her by the hair and mused her up good and well. She used to rip and tear at her dresses and gowns, fell to her knees in front her lover, and press her mouth to the dark blonde curls at the meeting of her thighs. They had been doing this together for such a long time, it took her about five minutes to get Marianne to cum from her mouth and fingers.

And then when Elizabeth finished, got up from her where she was kneeling, Marianne melted in her arms and looked at her with a such naked adoration that Elizabeth felt just about ready to go slay a damn dragon for her.

But that had been before the war, before Paris fell, before London got bombed, before _SS-Obersturmbannführer_ Beilschmidt went to opera to see _Tristan und Isolde._ He had been so transfixed with the music that he become enamored with the blond haired, blue eyed soprano that was warbling as Isolde, over Tristan’s dead body.

_Don’t you feel and see it?_ That’s how the lyrics went – _Don’t you hear it and see it? Do I alone hear this melody?_

Isolde going mad at the sight of her lover’s dead body, Isolde begging him to wake up, Isolde looking at him and thinking she’d follow him into his death, because there was no hope in the world if her beloved was no more. It wasn’t a choice to follow him into the realm of the dead, it was her fate pulling her along to the other side, because there was no other possible outcome from them, their souls were tied together and death couldn’t possibly tear them apart.

Elizabeth herself never saw the appeal of such stories, but they all made Marianne swoon and coo and awe, teary eyed and emotional.

When Marianne first started preparing for the part of Isolde, she had asked Elizabeth to lay down on the floor, close her eyes and act _dead._

_“I need them to believe I’m suffering over a dead body, my love. Please be so kind as to not move.”_

So Elizabeth had laid down on the floor, grumbling slightly , but she had laid down on the floor nonetheless and stood there for decidedly too much time. Marianne had sang over her _dead body,_ until she fell over Elizabeth and started kissing her and undressing her and descended on her with a hunger and ferociousness that stole her breath away.

Elizabeth had to admit reluctantly that Marianne was a lovely Isolde. She played the part many times over the years, in bigger and bigger productions and she was always showered in praise for it. It made Elizabeth smile, though she never let on exactly how proud she was – of Marianne, and of herself. Years and years of Isolde, and different _Tristans_ on stage with her, but they were all interchangeable.

It was hopelessly unfair that Marianne’s performance as Isolde had made her so appealing to the SS officer. Maybe if she had been lackluster and dispassionate, she could have slipped away, unnoticed and boringly safe.

Right now, Elizabeth wanted to kiss her and hold her and never let anything ever tear Marianne from her, wanted to steal her away, somewhere where they could both be safe, to bicker over who got to do the dishes and whose turn it was to fold the laundry.

But Marianne couldn’t go back to the _Obersturmbannführer_ looking ravished and debouched.

But Elizabeth couldn’t send her back like this, without feeling the taste of her skin against her tongue. She kissed her side of her throat, ran her lips and tongue over it. Marianne moaned through the attention –

“I missed you, _mon lapin_. Did you miss me?”

“What the hell do you think?”

“How should I know? Maybe that nice American solider kept you company.”

_Oh, damn bitch._

It was a very see through ploy to get Elizabeth angry and send her away – she was very much aware of how Marianne’s mind worked. But it didn’t mean it wasn’t efficient, didn’t mean Elizabeth didn’t fall for the bait of getting angry.

“Please leave Alfred out of this.”

“Where was he from? East Coast somewhere, right?”

“New York,” Elizabeth answered with a sigh, “Alfred’s from New York.”

“New York,” Marianne repeated. She grabbed a handful of Elizabeth’s short cropped hair and pulled her head away, stared into her green eyes as she always did. Not for the first time, Elizabeth wished she knew what was going on through Marianne’s head, what sort of thoughts bounced there that made her say and do the things she did.

Marianne stepped away from her reluctantly, went to the window of the study and looked out into the night. Place Vendôme was below them, dark and desolate in a way that Paris had no business being, but Paris wasn’t the same since the German Army got a hold of it.

“New York is not bombed out like London is. New York isn’t occupied by Nazis.”

“I have absolutely zero interest in what’s going on in New York.” Elizabeth snapped at her. Marianne ignored her, kept staring out into the night.

“But you’d be safe there.”

And that made Elizabeth want to grab her and shake her, yell into her face and get her to snap out of her ridiculous train of thought.

Despite the fact that people thought Elizabeth as emotionally repressed as any woman on her merry way to becoming a bitter old spinster, she was not. Elizabeth had the good fortune of meeting the one person she wanted to spend her whole life with early on, when they slept together in the same room at boarding school, she met her when they were both fourteen and didn’t understand the enormity of it. She didn’t want to find someone else, didn’t want to get married, didn’t want children of her own. She wanted a life in the shape of _them_.

Elizabeth also had 3 older brothers at home, and family content with letting her do whatever she wanted. The Kirkland name was safe and secure with her brothers, expectations of her had never been anything beyond get married young and then have some children. While her parents would be sad if that never came true, it wouldn’t be that much of a tragedy. Neither mother nor father would be surprised if she told them she never wanted a family.

Marianne wasn’t like that.

Jeanne Bonnefoy, Marianne’s beautiful mother, had married twice in her life – once it had been for love. She had married Marianne’s father for love - a love that was, apparently, the thing of fairytales. She became pregnant with Marianne, and then the love of her life died during the Second Battle of the Somme, weeks after his daughter was born.

Then she’d married for convenience, married a rich man that fell madly in love with her beauty and took care of her and her young daughter. Never had any other children, didn’t want any other children, and when Marianne grew up, she resented her because she laughed like her father, her eyes twinkled just like his, her mouth smiled the same way.

Marianne’s mother had told her love was a beautiful curse that burned you out from the inside, left you like a husk. What was better was to find someone that provided security and safety, someone that could take care of you and didn’t take your heart with them to the grave when they died.

Marianne had always been content with burning herself out for her love, but she was convinced there was no way her and Elizabeth could ever find a way to _be_ together.

Ever since they turned twenty, Elizabeth had been fighting an uphill battle against Marianne herself, because the Frenchwoman was convinced their love was eternal, but doomed to fall into tragedy. They each had to get married, Marianne said, they had to find some good husband that would make their lives easier and proper, and Elizabeth constantly found herself battering at castle walls with various degrees of success.

“I don’t need a damn husband to take care of me. You don’t need one either. You’ll take care of me and I’ll take care of you.” And Marianne used to smile at her sadly and kiss her, but she never wanted to hear about any of the plans Elizabeth had for them, couldn’t stand to hear about _growing old together._

She also kept pushing Elizabeth towards men – and it was infuriating and insulting and Elizabeth kept threatening that one day, maybe Marianne would push her towards some man that she might actually, god forbid, _like_.

Poor Alfred was the latest in the bunch – and Alfred was actually nice and handsome, and pretty silly, but he wasn’t _useless,_ and Elizabeth got close to him. He was young and brash and shiny and smiled too much, and he was also the closet thing she ever had to a best friend, it hadn’t taken long for Elizabeth to develop all sort of feelings for him, but they were firmly placed in the _maternal, platonic, big sister_ category.

Never mind the fact that men tended to have things called _cocks_ , and Elizabeth wasn’t very sure what one was supposed to do with a cock if it was placed in front of her. She had spent years and years becoming fluently proficient in making Marianne come, she had absolutely no interest in learning how to handle dicks.

“Look Marianne – when the war ends….”

“This war will never end!” Marianne shouted, and then caught herself, cringed at her volume. There was a desperation in her voice that had never been there before and Elizabeth’s heart ached. She walked over to Marianne and threw her arms around her middle, pressed herself to Marianne’s back. They stayed like that for a few minutes, Elizabeth listening to Marianne’s labored breathing, wondering if she was crying or still struggling against tears.

“When the war’s over, let’s go somewhere.”

Marianne giggled at that, sweet and dainty and much more sincere than when she was hanging off the arm of Gilbert Beilschmdit.

“You’ve been asking me to run away with you for years and I still don’t…”

Whatever Marianne wanted to say, it froze in her throat. There was a voice right outside the closed door of the office, a voice that was shouting for Marianne. They both stepped away from each other, put as much distance between their bodies as possible with so little time. Normally Elizabeth would reach for her gun – but she hadn’t been allowed to bring it with her, they searched the servants for concealed weapons. Her eyes went to the letter opener on the table. It was sharp enough, but….

She didn’t have time to pick it up. She didn’t have time to do anything – the door opened, bathing them in light from the hallway, and there he was, _Obersturmbannführer_ Beilschmidt looking at them from the doorway. Her brain froze and her heart seized in her chest – he was most definitely bigger and taller and armed, had the advantage of being in a building full of his allies, while for him, the two of them were definitely the enemy.

Elizabeth wanted to grab Marianne by the hand and make a run for it, jump out the damn window or something equally ludicrous to escape. Her eyes scanned Gilbert’s face, the surprise and incredulity there - why the hell was _his_ woman here, with this strange servant that they had brushed off earlier?

He seemed on the verge of saying something, but Marianne – lovely, smart, charming Marianne, so _smart_ – beat him to it.

_“Süsser, you finally found me.”_ She told him in smooth German, lips curving into a smile. Marianne walked her to him in a wide strides, but her arms around his neck and raised on the tips of her toes to kiss his cheek. “ _How lovely to see you again.”_

His arms instinctively went to her middle, but Gilbert’s red eyes were focused on Elizabeth, eying her suspiciously.

_“What are you doing here? What is she doing here?”_ His voice was surprised, but there was an edge of coldness there.

_“Oh, her?”_ Marianne looked uncertain what to answer – it didn’t look like she was lying, but it did seem like she was hiding something.

_“Yes, her. That damn maid that stared at me.”_ He pushed Marianne off of him, grabbed her by the shoulders and looked into her face. Elizabeth bunched her fists and felt her nails pierce the skin of her hands, she wanted to rip his throat out with her teeth for the way he grabbed Marianne. “ _Ludwig says she sounded off. ”_

_“Off?”_

_“Off. Not French enough. Weird accent.”_

Shit, shit, shit, bloody hell, she had worked so much on losing her accent, no one could actually clock it as _English_ accent, but maybe….

Marianne laughed in his face, looked over her shoulder at Elizabeth and then back at Gilbert.

“ _She’s not from Paris. She’s from Bretagne_. _She sounds like a peasant, but it’s only because she hasn’t been in Paris for long_. _That’s why she sounds off to Ludwig._ ”

“ _Bretagne_?”

“ _Yes, dear, you know. Bretagne. You can spot it a mile away. The same way someone from Bayern will sound different to someone from Berlin, won’t they? People in Bretagne sound…_ ” Marianne made a face here, stuck out her tongue to signify her distaste. “ _Peasants._ ”

He seemed to believe that, so he let Marianne go and stepped across from her, went over to Elizabeth and eyed her up and down. Then, without taking his eyes off Elizabeth, he asked –

“ _So why are you here, Marianne? Why are you hiding here with this peasant girl from Bretagne that was staring at me?”_

_“She fancies you, Gilbert.”_ Marianne answered smoothly. That made both Gilbert and Elizabeth turn to stare at her. Marianne casually closed the door of the room and pressed her back against it. She raised her leg, pressed her sole of her foot to the door, let the slit of her dress open up and reveal the tantalizingly soft flesh of her thigh.

Gilbert eyed her hungrily and she smirked at him.

_“She fancies me?”_

_“Fancies you, yes. I looked for her and cornered her, you see. I’m a jealous woman, so I wanted to see why she was looking at you like that, and the poor thing admitted she fancied you. And I thought – how lovely, how sweet. I could make this a gift for you.”_

Elizabeth wanted to shout and scream and hurl something at his stupid, horny head. But the ploy worked, he turned around from Elizabeth, crossed the room back to where Marianne was and pressed his hand against her thigh, pushed upwards, snaked his fingers under her dress.

Elizabeth couldn’t see straight with how angry she was, adrenaline and aggression coursing through her veins.

_“What kind of gift were you thinking about?”_ She saw him grab a handful of Marianne’s ass under the dress, and then turned to steal a glace at Elizabeth over his shoulder. Marianne grabbed his chin and turned him back towards her, made him look her in the eye like any proper _jealous lover_ would.

Elizabeth knew that gesture well, sometimes she used it on Marianne, grabbed her chin and forced her to look at her, focus on her, _don’t look at anyone else, look at me_. She was irrationally peeved that she could recognize their own push and pull seduction dance used on someone else.

Marianne pushed him off of her, playfully, and he stumbled back a few steps. The fact that he was half-drunk was working in their favor. She made him walk back to the chaise-longue and lay down on it, towered over him and Elizabeth felt slightly nauseous. 

_“Well, you won’t be touching her. I’ll be terribly upset if you do. ”_

At least in this godawful charade, she wouldn’t be forced to touch that man. Elizabeth didn’t want to think what her reaction might be, should she be forced to do that. Marianne wasn’t going to throw her to the dogs. But then, that meant…

Marianne turned to Elizabeth and gave her a smile – it was a beautiful smile, the kind she gave Elizabeth when they were all alone together in a crowded room, where they couldn’t hold hands or embrace or kiss, but Marianne would look her in the eye and smile at her _just so_ and all was right again in the world. It helped take the maddening edge off the tense anxiety Elizabeth felt in her stomach.

Then the smile on Marianne’s face changed to a smirk, she looked at Gilbert and then back at her, motioned her to come closer.

_“Come here. Help me take my dress off.”_ She shot at Elizabeth in French, sounded snotty and spoiled and exactly like the kind of _cocotte_ that she was playing out to be. Whenever she used that voice in the past, it made Elizabeth want to grab her hair, turn her around and smack her over the ass, make her come until her eyes rolled in the back of her head, until she couldn’t think properly, much less act like a haughty aristocrat.

But she couldn’t do that so she bit the inside of her cheek and walked over there slowly, eyes never leaving Marianne. She stepped behind her, though, grabbed a stray lock of Marianne’s hair and pulled at it painfully. It made the other woman hiss, and Elizabeth was gleefully happy for it. She heard Gilbert chuckling darkly from where he was sitting.

_“Is she being a bad maid, Marianne?”_

_“She’s just so jealous, dear.”_ And with that, she made eye contact with Elizabeth over her shoulder. Her delicate eyebrows were raised in a challenge, the little joke between then. Yes, Elizabeth was damn jealous, though she couldn’t give a rat’s ass over the damn German officer.

She pulled down the zipper of Marianne’s gown, pushed it off her shoulder and let it fall to the floor. Both her and Gilbert sucked in a breath at the sight of her naked body. Sure – Elizabeth knew that you couldn’t wear a dress that tight with underwear on, unless you wanted them to show through, but just because she knew Marianne wasn’t wearing underwear didn’t diminish the effect it had on her to _see_ it. Her mouth watered - it had been too long since they touched each other, too long since they fell into bed together, why, why, why did it have to go like _this_ –

It was a special form of torture – don’t see your lover for months, and then when they’re naked in front of you, you can’t _touch_ them.

_“Are all French women as slutty as you are? Good women are supposed to wear underwear,”_ Gilbert threw at her, voice mocking and aroused, Elizabeth could hear it in his voice. She knew that if she turned back to him, she would see the erection in his pants.

She probably should look at him – if she was supposed to be a silly maid that fancied him, she should be falling over herself, staring at him and blushing.

“ _Good women don’t know how to have fun._ ”

Marianne naked in front of her made it impossible to stare at anything else. It always took her breath away, only a little, because Marianne’s body was one that she knew better than her own, knew her by heart, how she tasted, how she smelled, how she felt when she was pressed up against her. Elizabeth knew about all the birthmarks and the moles and the freckles, knew how her breath hitched when you bit her neck, how she giggled when you tickled the back of her knees, knew the sound her flesh made when Elizabeth smacked her across her thick thighs.

_“Your little maid is staring at you, Marianne.”_ He said and chuckled, “ _She’s been good, though. Reward her for it._ ”

“ _However should I do that?_ ”

_“I’d say kiss her. She doesn’t look like she gets kissed too often.”_

Marianne turned to Elizabeth with a grin, and she didn’t _want_ to be grateful to _Obersturmbannführer_ Beilschmidt for being a pervert that enjoyed seeing women kiss, but oh, Elizabeth forgot all about him when Marianne kissed her.

First kissed were most likely awkward things. Elizabeth only had one proper _first kiss,_ and it had been a very awkward situation. She never forgot how her hands had been shaking, her mouth dry, her heart had been hammering in her chest and her knees weak.

Other types of first kisses – first kiss after a fight, first kiss after being away from each other for a long time, first time kissing each other with her mouth wet from the moisture between Marianne’s legs – all of them were first time kisses, but they all happened such a long time ago she barely cared to remember.

In front of Gilbert Beilschmidt, Marianne _did not_ kiss her like it was the first time. It was a passionate, open mouthed kiss, full of teeth and tongue and _I missed you, I missed you, I missed you, I’m scared and I missed you, make it go away, make the whole world go away, please, please, please._

Desperation and longing and heat, and all those things that they didn’t get the chance to talk about before. Her hand went to Marianne’s middle on their own, and she pulled her close with far more force than it was proper, pressed her against her chest. No way in hell would anyone believe this was anything but a reunion kiss between two old lovers, but luckily Beilschmidt seemed to think that all French women were whores and always ready for a good debauchment.

But it excited Elizabeth to know that this was their secret, out in the open, in front of this terrible man, that he could look at then and _not understand_ because no one else could ever understand the ties that bid them together. She felt moisture gathering between her legs, the thick blaze of anger and hopeless frustration turned into a roaring monster of possessiveness and arousal.

Marianne moaned against her mouth and she wanted to reach between her thighs, massage her clit and bring her to a blistering orgasm, then fall to her knees and bring her off again before she had any idea what was happening to her.

And then Marianne was rudely ripped from her arms. She didn’t think enough, couldn’t control herself properly - made a sharp, angry noise of frustration when Gilbert put his hand in Marianne’s hair and pulled her away Elizabeth.

The empowering heat of arousal was snuffed as if a bucket of cold water had been thrown over her head, and Elizabeth had to hug herself, bite her tongue so hard it drew blood, and she was left helplessly staring at the German officer as he was kissing the mouth that was rightfully _hers to kiss_. Gilbert had grabbed Marianne by her long, dark blond curls and he had forcefully pulled her to him, her naked back pressed tightly against his fully clothed chest. He had pulled her head back and kissed her hungrily.

The pearls that were still around her throat hung there like chains, sat heavily across her naked breasts, dusty pink nipples poking out from between rows of pearls. Elizabeth wanted to grab then and use them as leverage to pull her away. She wanted to look anywhere else, but she couldn’t, because she was absolutely blinded by fury and hypnotized by the way his free hand groped at Marianne’s breasts.

When he pulled away from the kiss, his deep red eyes made eye contact with Elizabeth’s own, only for a second before he dismissed her and looked at the woman still in his grasp.

_“You looked like you were enjoying that too much.”_ He told her in that German that wasn’t really _German,_ Prussian accent that sounded rougher and less tamed.

_“Gilbert, I…”_

_“Don’t.”_

He cut her off, voice sounding angry, but he restrained himself for anything else. Elizabeth looked at the hand in Marianne’s hair, saw his knuckles going white, pressure increasing.

Nazis didn’t like queers, as much as they didn’t like anyone with another political conviction, as much as they didn’t like Jews and Slavs and Romanis.

He had been the one that told them to kiss, but he probably expected it to be some sort of chore for them, a little bit of meanness that would offer him the visual stimulant of seeing two women kiss. He probably didn’t expect Marianne and Elizabeth to look like they were actively, intensely enjoying themselves. 

_“Is there something I need to know, Marianne?”_

And with that he let her go, and she stumbled away from him, but not too far. Elizabeth wanted to grab her and shield her with her body, but Marianne took a step back, righted herself, took another step back, walking herself backwards towards the desk. Gilbert was staring at her like a panther ready to pounce, and Marianne, always the infuriating woman that she was, smiled at him shakily.

“ _Of course not, susser. Just like there’s nothing to know about Ludwig._ ”

_Oh, bloody hell, you stupid, stupid woman, why would you antagonize the damn kraut?_

The atmosphere in the room took a sharp turn, became frosty and tense and palpable, and Elizabeth counted the seconds and went through options in her head. The look on Gilbert’s face showed that he was doing the same thing.

It wasn’t an open secret – it was a proper secret, the kind you didn’t really paid attention to unless you were forced to hide your own lovers from the world. Gilbert’s brother had a very close friendship to a particular Italian man – it passed under the radar. Very close friends that went to _boarding school_ together, and Elizabeth had laughed at that tid bit of information when she had read the files about them. Close friends from boarding school, yes, she knew all about that sort of thing.

It was absolutely ridiculous and infuriating to have a secret like that in common with younger Beilschmidt _,_ but oh hell, it didn’t seem like the kind of information one casually dropped in such a scenario.

But then – she saw something unexpected. Gilbert Beilschmidt relaxed for a fraction of a second, his gaze lost the flare of anger.

Elizabeth remembered what the file on him said, what Marianne observations about him had been – fiercely stubborn and proud, but considered himself honorable and he was brash, but not cruel in the way others of his rank were. Not a hypocrite – if his own brother was queer and Gilbert turned a blind eye to it, let him have his little Italian _best friend from boarding school,_ then he most likely made the split second decision to let Marianne have this, the passion and heat of kissing another woman and enjoying it.

It didn’t mean that he was okay with it – it just meant that they weren’t going to be dragged in front of the Gestapo for it. He was still overly proud and oozed machismo from every pore, and that sort of man didn’t really like seeing women he perceived as being _his_ enjoy themselves without being involved in it.

He walked over to Marianne, crossed the room in big steps and pushed her onto the desk. She went willingly, sprawled in front of him and arched her back so he had a good view of her breast, bared her neck in surrender.

Elizabeth could see the lines of his back, the tense shoulders as he put his hands on the desk on either sides of Marianne’s head.

_“Tell her to come here.”_ He ordered, and Marianne called out to Elizabeth.

_“Come here, mon lapin, come here.”_ The sound of her lilting voice calling out to Elizabeth in the French that thought her how to speak the damn language – she didn’t sound scared, she didn’t sound afraid, she didn’t sound hurt. The sound of her voice soothed the rage and intense burn of bile, eased her enough that she was able to move.

Elizabeth walked over to the desk and stepped across from it. She didn’t want to be near Gilbert, so she sat across from her, looked down at Marianne’s face as she was gazing up at Elizabeth with longing on her face.

“ _Kiss her. You can.”_ Gilbert said it in heavily accented French, like he was remembering something he got thought at school.

It made Elizabeth’s eyes shot up at him, frowning. The audacity of someone giving her permission to kiss her own partner! But she realized then – Gilbert didn’t know that. He was staring at Elizabeth with a darkness on his face, but it wasn’t…. _malicious_. Interested and curious, maybe, but not cruel.

“ _Kiss me, mon Cherie, please_.”

She would never be able to resist Marianne when she was pleading with her, especially not now, when her hands reached out towards Elizabeth, when she grabbed her by the arms so hard she felt her nails digging into her flesh through the material of her shirt.

So Elizabeth though, _To Hell with it,_ this whole situation impossible to deal with properly. She bent down over Marianne and kissed her open mouth, plunged her tongue inside. The overhead angle was strange, but Marianne kissed her with this reckless sort of passion that spoke of sheer, unfathomable _need_. She heard rustling and then Marianne gasped against her mouth, her fingers tightened even more against Elizabeth’s flesh.

Gilbert had used the fact that they were distracted with each other to open his pants and push inside Marianne, setting up this strong, forceful rhythm and shook the desk and made Marianne mewl desperately. He was frowning, brows thigh in concentration, mouth set into a sneer.

The pearls across Marianne’s throat shivered and shook, hit against each other and created another sort of sound in the room, mixing with the moans and the panting and the creaking of the desk. The sharp glint of the letter opener was just within her reach, she wanted to take the damn thing in plunge in his neck. This close, she could put enough force into it to cause some hell of damage. He was _distracted,_ so he wouldn’t fight her, would be able too and you bleed out quickly from a wound like that, if she just…

_“Kiss me, again, please, kiss me again.”_

Marianne pulled at the fabric of her shirt, pulled her down so they could crash their mouths together. It was a bad angle for kissing, the movement of Gilbert pounding in and out of her made it harder, their tongues were chasing each other and their lips were all wet with spit. Elizabeth imagined it looked obscene, both of them did, with lipstick smudged everywhere and spit and Marianne was moaning and Elizabeth’s thighs rubbed themselves together.

There was a fine line between being hopelessly, helplessly angry and being hopelessly, helplessly aroused.

It wasn’t the first time she was holding Marianne while she was being fucked by a man – they had explored that side plenty even back when they were in school – but it was most definitely the first time she was feeling like control was completely out of her hands. While each time they had done this before, Elizabeth had always been the one to veto out Marianne’s potential partners, and she always picked someone that wasn’t going to challenge her for her position as Marianne’s center of attention.

But this – this here, it didn’t feel like she had any sort of control over this situation and it was so off-putting and off-kilter. Marianne hanging on to her and kissing her and moaning, and that man, and the sound of flesh slapping together, it was all…

Marianne reached out and grabbed a handful of Elizabeth’s hair, gripped her painfully and forced her head down. Not to kiss her, but to force Elizabeth to look her in the eye. Then really, everything got narrowed down to that point, swimming a sea of blue that she knew so well, Marianne being her bloody point of gravity, the grip and pull of her fingers in Elizabeth’s hair bringing her down.

Gilbert’s pace started getting erratic and then when he came with a shout, Elizabeth still considered stabbing him in the neck just to not give him the satisfaction on an afterglow.

He grabbed Marianne by chin and made her look at him. He started into her face long and hard, both of them breathing heavily. Elizabeth didn’t know what he was searching for, didn’t know what he found or didn’t find on Marianne’s face. But then he let go out Marianne and straightened himself. He walked over to the other side of the desk, grabbed Elizabeth’s face in his hands. It made her gasp in shock, the sudden pressure of it, and _SS-Obersturmbannführer_ Beilschmidt pressed a bruising kiss to her mouth.

She forgot about how she was supposed to be a silly maid that fancied him – she bit at his lips hard, but it didn’t make him stop, he stopped on his own terms and he didn’t let go of Elizabeth’s face. It made Elizabeth’s knee weak from something very similar to fright – she was suddenly very acutely aware of the limitations her own body possessed. He was taller and bigger and stronger, and if he wanted to, he could easily overpower her.

Marianne had scrambled off the desk, naked and with semen between her legs, stood there tense like a cornered viper.

Gilbert paid her no mind, but he did let go of Elizabeth’s face then and she all but collapsed in the leather desk chair. He looked her again, and then turned to Marianne with a serious face that didn’t suit his usually grinning mouth.

_“Do you think I’m some sort of a monster?”_

Marianne didn’t answer him right away, she straightened her back and raised her chin defiantly. Elizabeth wondered what sort of relationship they really had, beyond what she knew. Marianne was supposed to be a honey pot that gathered information from him, but for the first time, Elizabeth had to wonder what it was all like. Did he really trust her? Was she always acting like an airhead around him?

Was this the first he saw the steel in her spine, the hard edge in her eyes?

Maybe. Probably. With the way he was looking at her. Then he chuckled, sounded bitter and hurt and he was still towering over Elizabeth. Marianne narrowed her eyes at him and he looked at her curious and testing – he bent over Elizabeth slowly and Marianne grabbed the damned letter opener that Elizabeth had been eyeing the whole night, put it between the two of them like she was Judith about to slay Holofernes.

_“You know, Marianne, I wondered about you.”_ Gilbert said, moving away from Elizabeth and walking slowly, with his hand raised in mock surrender, until he stood right in front of Marianne. She didn’t let her guard down. _“I wondered when I first saw you on stage – what is it about this mourning Isolde, where is all that passion and grief coming from? Then when I met you after that, I found it missing, but it had to be there, somewhere. I don’t think you can fake true emotion.”_

He raised his hand and pressed the tip of his finger against the pointy end of the letter opener.

He looked at Marianne’s hard face and grabbed her wrist hard. She hissed between her teeth and the lost her grip, the letter opener clattered out of her grasp. Elizabeth jumped to her feet and was ready to jump on his back and claw at him, but Gilbert turned his head sharply and pinned her in place with his gaze. She snarled at him, but stayed put.

He turned back to Marianne and told her,

“ _I’m not going to follow you if you leave, but I don’t want to see you here again either. There’s no place for desire in war, Liebling, it clouds your head and makes you stupid_.” Then his voice got softer, looked at Marianne with something akin to longing. Not for her, not really – for something he saw him her that got reflected back at him. “ _And I’m not a monster, I’m a solider. But other men are not like me.”_

With that, he let go of her wrist and walked away from the both of them, didn’t turn to look back as he closed the door of the office with a bang.

Marianne and Elizabeth were left there staring at each other for a long moment, panting hard, the edge of adrenaline and leftover heat, all those emotions that were running around aimlessly, what was Elizabeth supposed to do with them?

Marianne was the first to move, she grabbed her dress of the floor and slipped it on without looking at Elizabeth. Her fingers were shaking and she couldn’t zip it up, so Elizabeth walked over to her, pushed her hands away and did zipped it up for her.

She heard Marianne let out a shaky breath and then when she didn’t move, Elizabeth went in front of her.

“Marianne, look at me.” She wasn’t able to touch her now, couldn’t touch her, couldn’t grab her face and look her in the eyes because she touched her then Elizabeth wouldn’t be able to stop touching her and then they would be really fucked because this wasn’t the time nor place for kissing.

Marianne gazed at her then, with shiny eyes and a bit of a far off look in her eyes, and Elizabeth couldn’t have her looking like that, she needed her to focus and get out of here, because the damn Nazi was allowing it, but also because it wasn’t safe to be here. If someone else came, what the hell were they going to do?

They could get out of the Ritz and hide away in some dark Parisian hole, and Marianne could break down as much as she liked, but not right _now_.

“Love, you need to focus on me.” Elizabeth said, a bit to quickly for it to be comforting, snapping her fingers in front of Marianne’s face. The other woman didn’t say anything, but her gaze lost its glassy edge. “We need to get out of here. How do we get out of here?”

“Down the corridor by the stair – there’s a servant’s door and it leads to the kitchen. We can go through there. If anyone stops us…”

If anyone stopped them – Marianne _looked_ like she had been put through the bender by someone, and Elizabeth could play it like she was the nice maid who found her, picked her up and was hiding her from grabby paws.

Elizabeth nodded and grabbed Marianne’s wrist, pulled her along with her out the door. She looked left and right, tried to listen to footsteps, but it seemed like it was clear. They closed the door behind them carefully, and started walking down the corridor. Marianne didn’t bother to get her shoes, the high heels would have been cumbersome to their sneaking around.

Elizabeth pulled Marianne along with her, down the stairs, breath catching whenever they heard sounds, but they didn’t meet anyone along the way. The noises coming from the kitchen were their destination, and when they go there, Marianne asked Elizabeth to stop. They waited until the door opened, a pretty young line cook stepped through.

The woman didn’t see them at first, but she when she did, there was fright on her face and surprise. She didn’t say anything, didn’t make a sound, took in Marianne’s appearance with her mused hair, wrinkled dress and the ruined make up. Marianne walked up to her and took her earrings of, placed them in the woman’s hands.

_  
“Do you think you can help us leave here without anyone seeing us?”_

The young woman stared at the diamonds, the way they caught in the little light. Behind them, the kitchen was all hustle and bustle.

“ _There’s a way, yes. You’ll stand out, dressed like that, but I can…”_ The young woman took off her cook jacket and offered it to Marianne, stayed there in her undershirt, still looking at the fascinated at the glittering diamond earrings. Marianne accepted the jacket gratefully and slipped it over her shoulders, didn’t bother to close it yet.

They followed the young cook toward down a small, dark hallway that opened to a courtyard, probably meant to receive produce and supplies for the kitchen. They stepped outside, all three of them, and while Elizabeth could see the gooseflesh forming on the young cook’s hands, the girl fished out a packet of cigarettes from her pants and lit one up. There were rows of bikes, Vespas and Piaggio’s in the courtyard, but no cars.

_“Which one is yours?”_ Marianne asked casually, starting to take off her pearl necklaces one by one. She gave them to the woman, set it in her outstretched hand. When she didn’t say anything, Marianne looked at her and sighed, “ _Those are Cartier. Each one of them is worth more than a bike. There’s several of them – if you’re smart you won’t sell them all at once, but even if you don’t know how to haggle with someone, any pawn shop will give you enough to buy a car.”_

_“The red one at the end of the line – there.”_ Cigarette between her fingers, she pointed towards a beat up little Vespa. She gave them a key from the pocket of her pants and looked at the Marianne and Elizabeth – “ _Good luck_ ”, she answered, threw away the rest of her cigarette and walked back inside, Marianne’s jewelry clutched between her fingers.

Marianne and Elizabeth shared a look between them, then walked over to the Vespa. Elizabeth was the on the one that straddled it fist, put the keys in the ignition and Marianne’s hand went around her middle.

“Right. Are you ready?”

Marianne didn’t answer with words, but she felt her nod against her back. That was enough.

* * *

They were already together at seventeen – they played it as good friends that whispered to each other and Marianne ran her fingers through Elizabeth’s hair. It wasn’t strange for women to be that close, so they got away with a lot of casual affection.

Marianne had been a beautiful song bird of a woman that attracted male attention like she had a pot of honey between her legs and they were all swarming around her – and she had always known about it, learned that she was beautiful far too early and took advantage of it. She made eyes and fluttered her eyelashes at teachers, flirted with shop clerks, made Elizabeth fume with anger all the damn time. And they fought about it – at that age, while Marianne had blossomed into a butterfly, she was awkward and lanky and too skinny, all whip and shout and anger.

But while Marianne played at the little ditzy flirty girl, she was capable of being just as cruel and punishing, and did things for the sole purpose of getting Elizabeth riled up. Just before one Easter holiday, they had a terrible fight, and then both of them went back home – Elizabeth went back to her family in England, spent two weeks being miserable and forgot why she had been angry in the first place. She went back to boarding school ready to make amends and it went all out the damn window when she saw that Marianne had a row of little love bites on her neck.

The anger and hurt and overwhelming sense of betrayal were terrible, but the nauseating possessiveness was the thing that got her most. _How dare you, how dare he_ , it was no doubt in her mind that it was some boy that didn’t matter at all, the one that left those mark. _You’re mine, you’re not anyone’s else to touch, how dare you let someone else touch what’s mine._

And then she couldn’t look at her, refused to touch her, closed herself off from Marianne in a way that hurt her more than shouts and accusations. Nothing hurt Marianne more than not giving her attention, nothing stung harder than refusing affection, and Elizabeth had decided that she wasn’t going to give it anymore.

At first, Marianne called her bluff, most likely thinking Elizabeth would be the one to cave first. But weeks passed, and Marianne was met with the same coldness, and Elizabeth missed her terribly, but that thrice damned French floozy didn’t not deserve her attention, nor her heart, nor her affections. And then Marianne seemed different too – didn’t smile so much anymore, didn’t flirt, didn’t laugh.

Marianne’s nightmare started becoming worse, the nightly trashing and screaming and waking up crying – before, Elizabeth had used to crawl into bed with her and hold her through the night. There was no holding anymore, and Marianne would jump up in bed, panting and with tear tracks running down her face. She’d turn sad eyes at Elizabeth and sometimes she even said, “ _Please come here_ ” and the begging in her voice was heart wrenching, but Elizabeth ignored her and turned to her side.

It was all a miserable affair – the rest of year passed like that, exactly like that, and then summer came around. Elizabeth went back home again – she didn’t write, didn’t send Marianne anything for her birthday.

It would have been like that – the big heart stopping, earth shattering misery and then never talking to each other again. Maybe by the time September came around, the wound would be cauterized enough for them to look at each other without hurting.

She asked for another room-mate at boarding school before the school year even started, but when she went back in September – it wasn’t a new room-mate waiting for her there, it was still Marianne.

“You have to forgive me.” She said, before Elizabeth even had the chance to demand what was going on. “You have to forgive me, I can’t stand this. I can’t…”

“ _No._ ”

“No, you don’t understand.” And Marianne looked absolutely frazzled and torn, pacing through the small room with the two beds on opposite sides. “You don’t understand, I can’t stand this, and I’ve _tried_ , you overly proud, pig-headed woman. I need you to forgive me, because I have no idea what I’m supposed to do if you don’t.”

“Well – most likely you’re supposed to find yourself a husband, like your mother wants you to, like you keep saying we both have to eventually. So start that – and see this as the natural consequence of your own actions.”

“Do you think I haven’t tried? Do you think I want to spend my life tearing myself to pieces over you?”

“Try harder.” Elizabeth threw at her, cold and vicious and stabbing.

“How can I? How I am supposed to get over you, when you haunt me when I’m awake and when I’m asleep? It’s your voice that I hear at night, it’s you shouting that I’m yours and your mine and I’m not allowed to leave you. How dare you leave me when I’m cursed with carrying you in my bloodstream?”

And seeing her tearing herself up apart from the inside, screaming and raging and heart-broken, it made something in Elizabeth click and lock into place. It was the terrifying and exhalating realization that Marianne, cruel and mercurial and prone to tragedy as she was, loved her the same way, with the slight crazed devotion that bordered on blasphemous.

And just like that – it didn’t matter anymore, and it didn’t matter since – Marianne was hers, and she was Marianne’s and that would never change. She kept being jealous and Marianne’s eyes kept wandering. She kept punishing her for it, Marianne kept steadfastedly believing they were doomed to end in tragedy, but at least this one thing was clear, that neither of them would be able to love someone else quite the same ever again.

* * *

“Do you remember when your brother asked me to marry him?”

“I definitely _don’t want_ to remember about when my brother asked you to marry him.”

She handed Marianne a glass of water – it wasn’t the fancy champagne she had been drinking at the Ritz, but the little inn they were staying at didn’t have anything else. Elizabeth was staying here under a false name, with false papers that had been provided to her by her superior officer. Being an intelligence officer in enemy territory was not a glamorous life – unless you were Marianne, then it meant that you were wining and dining at the Ritz while doing your part to help the French Resistance.

Marianne took a sip of water and looked at Elizabeth seriously. Her hair was wet, she had taken a bath and scrubbed herself pink before burrowing one of Elizabeth’s nightgowns and sitting heavily on the battered little armchair in the room.

“I always thought your brother might have known – about the two of us, I mean. I used to think that’s why he offered.”

Elizabeth wanted to correct her, tell her that Alistair was a greedy little leprechaun that loved shiny things and Marianne was the shiniest he had ever come across.

“I don’t care why he offered. There are enough compromises I have to make in life, Marianne. Getting married with someone for propriety’s sake or duty, letting you get married because your mother really wants grandchildren – those aren’t things I want in consider. That’s always been my condition.”

_Married_ was a disgustingly deceptive concept, and the word was bitter and heavy against Elizabeth’s tongue. As much as she ruthlessly mocked silly girls that dreamt of tall, dark, handsome husbands, Elizabeth was uncomfortably aware that if she had had the option to do so, she would have asked Marianne to marry her at eighteen.

Had either one of them been a man, they would have gotten married at eighteen, moved together in slowly built a life together. They would have had a shitty little flat to live in and not enough money, Marianne would have complained endlessly about the drafty windows and they’d have to huddle together in bed to fight the cold. They would have made love in the morning, and walked together holding hands, and they could kiss whenever they want – Marianne’s mother would be happy, everyone would congratulate them and no one would ever think about suggesting anything else.

Marianne was looking at her with this little smile on her face, and Elizabeth terribly wanted to kiss her, but her body didn’t want to move.

“I would have married you, you know. If I could have - ” Marianne closed her eyes and let her head back. She laughed and ran her hand through her wet hair – “I would have grown to hate you eventually, I think. Marriage tends to do that to people – doesn’t it? I think it does. But I would have married you, and hate being tied to you and love you nonetheless”.

“Marianne, I…”

“Gilbert told me once that he had a lover before the war. Some spunky Hungarian tomboy that rode horses, and threw punches and was too mouthy for her own good. They always clashed because she _hated_ Hitler and what he was doing to Germany. When he was recruited into the SS, she threw an ashtray at his head and told him to leave. He still has the scar.” Marianne looked at the ceiling, measured the cracks in it with her eyes, before continuing, “Someone told on her, how fiercely she was against the regime. The Gestapo took her away while Gilbert was fighting in Poland.”

Elizabeth wanted to say that the damn kraut deserved the ashtray to the head and he deserved the heartbreak, but whoever the mouthy Hungarian tomboy was, she didn’t deserve the Gestapo. But she didn’t say anything, because Marianne’s voice was cracking and bruised.  
  
“He was right, you know. There’s no room for the desire in war.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.” Elizabeth closed her own eyes and sat down on the bed. Suddenly she felt impossibly tired and really wished she had some alcohol available. “All war is about desire – you want something that’s not yours and you _desire_ it.”

Marianne got up from her chair and walk over to the bed. She laid down next to Elizabeth, but there was a distance between them bodies, like they were back to being teenagers dancing around each other.

There was big open chasm between them, and Elizabeth knew how to close it, she just didn’t feel like she could do it. She turned her head to look at Marianne, and Marianne was looking at her with something that looked too much like heartbreak. Elizabeth licked her lips, moved her hands a few inches to the side. Brushed their fingers together.

“My mother used to tell me so many stories about my father, about how he was. Rarely about the two of them together, but always wondered – if he died senselessly or if he thought there were things worth dying for?”

“Are there?” Elizabeth asked, without putting too much thought into it.

“Yes.” Marianne said with a shrug, but the conviction in her voice was strong. Then the word hung there between the two of them and they let it sink in, before Elizabeth lunged forward and kissed Marianne, once, twice, three times, kept kissing her and kissing her. 

“ _Please touch me, please touch me,”_ Marianne begged and Elizabeth wasn’t about to refuse her, her body was still running high with the tension and emotions of the night. She pulled the drawstring that held the nightgown closed, opened it and pushed it down Marianne’s shoulder just enough to reveal her breasts.

Marianne’s breast were always fascinating things to Elizabeth – they were they were heavy and soft and pillowy, with nipples that were the perfect shape and size for Elizabeth to bite them and roll her tongue over them. She had spent much of teenage years and young adulthood being mesmerized and transfixed by the movement and bounce of them beneath Marianne’s shirts.

Elizabeth closed her lips against of the dusty pink nipples, licked and suckled it, making Marianne’s back arch. She had a split second memory of those nipples peaking out between rows of pearls as Gilbert Beilschmidt had fucked her on the desk – it made her teeth close sharply, biting into Marianne’s soft breast.

The _anger-arousal-fire-fury._ The helplessness and the intense lack of control. _I don’t know what do to_ and _I don’t want to be here_ and _I want to kill him_ and _I want to steal you away from here_. It sent a shudder through Elizabeth’s whole body, made her dig her nails into Marianne’s flesh, making the other woman choke out a pleasured gasp.

Marianne grabbed a handful of Elizabeth’s blouse, pulled at the fabric of it.

“Take this off, take all your clothes of,” she whispered roughly. The desperate need in her voice made Elizabeth stop what she was doing so she could look at her lover, met her eyes and saw the strain there. “I want to feel you against me.”

Elizabeth gave her a short, forceful kiss and got off of her. She started unbuttoning her blouse, pushed her skirt off her legs. Her hands were fumbling and too hurried and Marianne raised herself on her elbows, stared at Elizabeth hungrily. Her nightgown was bunching obscenely around her middle – Elizabeth helped pull it off her body.

Both of them were naked now, and Elizabeth crawled back into bed, held her herself over Marianne, really, really considered what was the best way to play this. Gentle would have been the best way, considering earlier events, but her muscles wouldn’t allow gentle, she was too strung up. But what if Marianne was sore, she didn’t want to hurt her, but Elizabeth wanted to take a bite out of her and leave marks all over her body, but what if…

Marianne made the decision for her, grabbed a handful of Elizabeth’s hair and pulled her down, kissed her roughly. Elizabeth lost her balance, fell heavily over Marianne – so much for being careful, she had wanted to be considerate and not cut off her breathing. Marianne didn’t seem to mind it, though, wrapped her thighs around her middle and squeezed her between them. Elizabeth melted against her, sighed into the kiss.

Pressed against each other, mouths kissing, Marianne’s fingers drawing soothing patterns over her back, Elizabeth finally, _finally_ , finally felt like the grip over her heart was loosening, finally felt like she broke through the surface of the water, finally able to breath.

_You’re here, I’m here, I got you, you got me._

All that soothing nonsense you tell children when they’re scared and crying.

All the soothing nonsense Elizabeth used to mumble in Marianne’s ear when she woke up from one of her terrible nightmares.

Elizabeth was relaxed enough that it took her off-guard completely when Marianne used her strength to flip the two of them over. One second she was on top, the next second her head was on the pillow and she had a grinning French woman looking down on her.

“What are you doing?” Elizabeth asked. Marianne sat up in her lap, took Elizabeth’s hand and pressed it between her breasts, against her sternum, where she could feel the steady thump of her heart beating. One, two, three, four, and Elizabeth felt stupidly grateful for it.

“I’m alright.” Marianne told her, like it needed to be said aloud.

“I know, what the hell’s wrong with you? Of course you are.” Elizabeth snapped at her, frowning, but Marianne’s only chuckled and bent down to kiss her again. Down the line of her throat, Marianne bit and licked and sucked, Elizabeth clung to her back, reluctant to let her go when the other wanted to move lower.

“I can hear you thinking. Stop it. Let me make you feel good, mmm?” Marianne muttered, accent thicker and murkier.

“Shouldn’t I be the one offering that?” That made her laugh.

“No. I’m not the one that’s shaking all over.”

“I’m not shaking.” Elizabeth said, bunching her hands into fists. “I’m just…” Marianne looked at her with a raised eyebrow and a look that said she didn’t quite believe a word coming out of her mouth.

“I know, _mon lapin_.”

“No, you can’t….” Elizabeth closed her eyes, feeling it was useless to keep protesting, but she couldn’t help it.

“But I do.” And with that, Marianne grabbed her chin and forced Elizabeth to look at her. “Elizabeth. I know.”

And really, that made Elizabeth start giggling, an uncharacteristically girlish sort of sound that bubbled out of her with relief and happiness and an overwhelming amount of fondness. Marianne started laughing as well, pressed her forehead to Elizabeth’s shoulder, her warm, wet breath coming out in bursts across her skin. 

“Yes, I supposed you do.” Elizabeth acknowledged, raising her hands so she could run her fingers through Marianne’s slightly damp golden hair.

Marianne shuffled even closer then, nuzzled the dips of her collarbone. Fingertips were tracing patterns across skin and the urgency and desperation weren’t there anymore. It was just like _before,_ when the air between them was glowy and soft and there wasn’t anything to say, because the important confession had been made a long time ago.

Sometimes Elizabeth forgot – that she knew Marianne like the back of her hand, but that it went both ways. It was the worst – she could never really hide when she was scared, or anxious, or angry, because Marianne knew.

This was probably the most damning thing out of them all. When you meet someone young and fall in love with them, you start molding your tastes and your preferences and your movement and thought patterns around them. The two of you grow into each over like vines and then – how are you supposed to go out and find someone else, when you have sticky little fingerprints and scratch marks and bites all over yourself. How are you supposed to relearn how to be with someone new, when you’ve been shaped by another love?

“Elizabeth?”

“Yes, love?”

There was a moment of silence, while Elizabeth was lazily considering her own levels of energy. She felt like she could sleep for an entire week.

“We’ll be fine, right?”

And that was the question. Elizabeth had no bloody idea if they would be. There was still a war going on, and both of them would have to report the fact that Marianne had been unceremoniously dismissed from her position as Beilschmidt’s favorite, and Elizabeth herself had failed her own ‘ _gather information_ ’ mission. Maybe there would be some other mission, or maybe they’d get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, something could always happen. She wanted to say that, _yes, we’ll be okay, love, yes, trust me, I’ll keep you safe_ , but the reality of it was different.

“I have no bloody idea, Marianne.”

“Mmmm.” Marianne didn’t say anything, and Elizabeth didn’t want to add anything to it either. “I don’t want to live in London. After the war, I mean.” The other woman said abruptly. “I hated it before the war, I don’t think I’ll like it any better after.”

“Well I don’t want to live in bloody Paris either. I spent too much of my life surrounded by French people.” That made Marianne laugh again, and Elizabeth felt her heart skip a beat, tried fruitlessly to ignore the fact that Marianne was the one who wanted to talk about a future _after the war._

“Spain?”

“Fuck, _no._ Nothing that’s too hot.”

“Well them, my dear, where would you like to go?” Elizabeth closed her eyes for a second and tried to think about it. Where would she like to go?

“I have no idea. Somewhere where that hasn’t been torn apart by the war.”

“New York is still an option. I bet Alfred would love to have you there.”

She tugged on one of Marianne’s blonde locks with force, made her yelp and then snicker under her breath.

“I hate you, you have absolutely no sense of humor if you don’t find it hilarious.” Marianne told her with an indignant pout. Elizabeth kept a straight face while looking at her, fingers still tangled in her hair. She tightened her grip on it, pulled Marianne into a kiss.

Kissed her, and kissed her, and kissed her, until breaths turned into moans, and swallowed the air in her lungs and the willed the whole world to narrow down to _this_.


End file.
